Road Usage Charging Reports With Route-Privacy Aggregation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing road usage charging systems face a tradeoff between preserving user privacy and accurately allocating funds to road maintenance, as detailed location and fee information can reveal individual trip patterns.
Innovation Solution
A system that generates sum and aggregate reports without revealing individual vehicle routes, using a secure application cloud to aggregate anonymized data from vehicles, ensuring that only total amounts owed are shared with the RUC service provider.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If detailed location and fee information is collected from vehicles, then accurate allocation of funds to road maintenance is achieved, but user privacy is compromised as individual trip patterns are revealed
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the necessary aggregated information (total fees owed by vehicle classes) while leaving out individual vehicle location data and trip patterns. The system separates the collection of detailed telemetry data from the reporting mechanism, sending only class-level summaries to the RUC service provider, thereby preventing reconstruction of individual trip patterns while maintaining fund allocation accuracy.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent merges individual vehicle fee obligations into aggregated totals by vehicle class (e.g., heavy duty vs. light duty). Instead of reporting individual vehicle data, the system combines multiple vehicles' information into class-level summaries, which preserves user privacy while still enabling accurate fund allocation to road domains based on usage patterns of each vehicle class.
2Manufacturing precision
If individual vehicle route information is reported, then precise charging accuracy is achieved, but the system complexity increases due to need for secure data handling and anonymization
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the reporting system into two distinct components: (1) a data collection component that gathers detailed telemetry information locally in vehicles, and (2) a reporting component that generates aggregated summaries. This segmentation allows the system to maintain charging accuracy through precise local measurement while reducing overall system complexity by eliminating the need for centralized secure data handling infrastructure.
Solution Approach 2:
The vehicle's onboard system performs self-service by locally calculating and reporting aggregated fee obligations without requiring external intervention for data aggregation. The vehicle autonomously determines which road domains it has used and computes the corresponding fees, then reports only the necessary summary information, reducing the complexity of centralized processing systems.
Data Source
AI summary
A sum report is generated for each vehicle of a plurality of vehicles, the respective sum report indicating an account of the vehicle to be charged and a total sum owed by the vehicle. An aggregate report is generated indicating total amounts owed to each of a plurality of charger domains across the plurality of vehicles without indicating the accounts of the vehicles. The sum reports and the aggregate report are sent to a RUC service provider, the RUC service provider being configured to charge the vehicles using the sum reports and credit the charger domains using the aggregate report, while being unable to determine which routes were taken by the vehicles.